On a serious note: today, as we enter the holiday season, we look back on a year that was extremely difficult for a lot of people. And because this is a marketing blog, we were with you every step of the way, doling out strategies to help business owners and marketers stay afloat.
Let’s take a look back at the top 10 online marketing and advertising stories of 2020.
10. COVID-19 changes how consumers shop (and search).
The inception of COVID-19 made it clear: in-person retail was about to take a hit. Google advertisers tracking in-store visits saw conversion volume drop by 90%, as e-commerce became more and more of a necessity for online businesses.
Top Digital Marketing Stories 2020 Store Visits COVID-19
Not only did the nature of how consumers shop change; the nature of how they searched changed as well.
Searches for keywords containing COVID-related long-tail variants thailand cell phone database skyrocketed as consumers began to wonder how their favorite product or service would be impacted by the virus.
Top Digital Marketing Stories 2020 COVID-19 Search Interest
COVID-19 search interest in the US.
Seemingly mundane questions took on greater significance and increased search volume:
The industry also saw mobile searches drop by around 25% as consumers began browsing more from their homes. Marketers quickly found it necessary to build e-commerce storefronts, monitor the newly released Google Trends Coronavirus Hub, and even switch to smart bidding strategies to match the changes in search behavior.
9. Businesses everywhere boycott Facebook advertising to influence social change.
The Facebook ads boycott, formerly known as #StopHateForProfit, began to gather steam around mid-June. Color of Change—the largest online racial justice organization in the U.S—together with the NAACP, ADL, Sleeping Giants, and others, called on Facebook advertisers to halt all ad spending through July.
Top Digital Marketing Stories 2020 Facebook Ads Boycott
Frustrated with Facebook’s inability to moderate hate speech, these organizations hoped that a month of lost revenue would force the platform to think more seriously about putting steps in place to combat hate, racism, harassment, and the like.
A ton of enterprise businesses and corporations—from Adidas and Best Buy, to Starbucks Coca-Cola—joined in on the movement. Small businesses walked the line between taking a stand for social justice and losing ad revenue in an already dismal (for many) economic situation.
The movement achieved its goal of hitting Facebook’s wallet. Unfortunately, despite remaining a great place for advertisers to get results, the platform has done little to crackdown on hate and misinformation since the boycott.
TikTok & YouTube continue to grow amongst Zoomers.
The all-powerful Generation Z (affectionately known as Zoomers) is gaining steam in pop culture. In a world where YouTube influencers are picking fights (and getting them!) with Floyd Mayweather, YouTube has continued to prove itself a vital platform for advertisers to reach younger audiences. If you haven’t yet, check out our tips for doing just that.
2020 also saw the ascension of TikTok, which by August had already accrued more the 2 billion downloads, making it the world’s fastest growing social media platform.
Top Digital Marketing Stories 2020 TikTok advertising
By mid-year, TikTok had established itself as another extremely viable channel for brands trying to reach a younger demographic.
Advertisers: want to learn how to get up and running on TikTok? Check out our complete guide to advertising on TikTok.
7. Google drops the Page Experience Update and Core Web Vitals.
In May, Google introduced new metrics for measuring user experience (UX) called Core Web Vitals. Specifically, Core Web Vitals were meant to help marketers get a better handle on load speed, interactivity, and visual stability as it relates to UX.
The metrics are as follows:
Largest Contentful Paint (loading): measures perceived load speed and marks the point in the page load timeline when the page’s main content has likely loaded.
First Input Delay (interactivity): measures responsiveness and quantifies the experience users feel when trying to first interact with the page.
Cumulative Layout Shift (stability): measures visual stability and quantifies the amount of unexpected layout shift of visible page content.
Top Digital Marketing Stories 2020 Core Web Vitals
Google accompanied the release with a set of reports in Search Console that allowed marketers to, at a glance, detect which pages on their sites were lacking in the defined areas.
In late May, Google followed up the C